Challenging Your World View

This week was heavy. It was really intense. Our lovey speaker came this week to talk to us about spiritual worldview, and she opened my eyes to see how truly bizarre my worldview is. All of my life I’ve been seeing everything through these glasses. My western mind filtered out things from other cultures and histories to better fit my ideal for this world. This even applied to the Bible. Why haven’t I noticed in the past that people like Gideon, Saul and David worshipped idols and contacted the dead? Well, because it wasn’t important to my worldview. Contacting the dead isn’t real, right? Idols are nothing but objects that people stupidly think are god, it has no real power. Or does it? Ask anyone in a non-western society and I think they would have a different opinion. This week was a really loaded week. We got to learn about a power-driven worldview and how to reach these people with the most powerful spirit out there, God. But I have to say my mind was blown so many times. Sometimes too much. I couldn’t get my mind wrapped around a lot of the ideas. Multiple times I remember instinctively just saying “stop. I don’t want to know”. And I didn’t, because my western worldview is so much easier to deal with, so much less to think about. This week we also learned about how powerful the demonic realm is. How so many cultures around the world are trapped in it, most of the time not even knowing it. Even the Christians in some of these cultures don’t know it. They’ve heard the salvation story, but that didn’t change the fact that tradition tells them to talk to the dead or praise idols. These things have power. These things keep the communities going. They’ve yet to hear the power story, the story that tells them there is an infinitely strong spirit, and his name is God. His name is Jesus. I think that’s the one thing I held unto tight this week. I may not see the crazy things happening around the world. I may be culturally blind to the strongholds around me and the power the enemy has over so many lives, but I know God is so much stronger and He is good. Throughout it all He is good, no matter what happens or what the answers to my million questions this week are, He’s good, and Jesus is bigger than anything else.

We also went on outreach in LA yesterday, which was so cool. The point was just to pray for people and it was so simple yet so amazing. I was nervous because I suck at evangelism. I never know what to say and I always think people are just gonna fight me (or bite me). My friend Aaron really helped me out and gave my some tools to allow people to open up. We got to pray for a few people and near the end of the outreach I saw a woman sitting at a table and God convicted me to go talk to her. I didn’t want to. Aaron wasn’t around. Another team member who was with me wasn’t around. I had no one to fall back on. But I went, cause I knew it would eat at me if I didn’t. I kind of just sat next to her and was like “so… what’s your biggest desire in life”. She looked at me really funny and then just said “love” so confidently. And then I got to share with her so confidently that the God I love actually is love itself, and I got to pray with her that she finds this sweet love. God totally knew that was gonna happen. He totally knew I was nervous and gave me something so good and so simple. God is love. I know that in my heart, I can share that for sure.

So this week has been long and heavy, but it’s been good.

In the end it all comes down to love. I am loved. That goes beyond anything my mind can or can’t comprehend. That’s the basic I’m going back to tonight. I’m at peace and my God is good.